


The Adventure of the Consulting Five Year Old

by ear_hats



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Disney, John's blog, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Sherlock is sassier than Garfield on a monday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ear_hats/pseuds/ear_hats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unseen blog post of John H Watson's. John tries to teach Sherlock about sentiment - through Disney, of course. Set between Hounds and Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventure of the Consulting Five Year Old

**Author's Note:**

> This was an idea of mine and dainton's and it stuck :) originally posted on FF.net and beta-d, as always, by FezzesRCool and dainton, cheers!
> 
> Implied Johnlock, you can totally picture them snuggled up on the sofa if you want. I do.

**The Personal Blog of**

 **Dr. John H Watson**

**The Adventure of the Consulting Five-Year-Old**

Finally, a few days breather in between a big case and Sherlock prowling about the flat demanding cigarettes because Scotland Yard doesn’t need him all the time.

Sherlock accidentally revealed to me the other day that he really doesn’t understand why the couple in the Dartmoor pub didn’t just get rid of the dog completely. Sentiment, I told him for the second time and watched a little flicker of confusion in his eyes that, I’m certain, he would never let many of you live to remember. I fear that our favourite consulting detective, though the people down at Scotland Yard would not _believe_ what I’m about to say, Sherlock is a little morally lost. And as no-one had recently attempted to direct him onto the normal path; I decided to take matters into my own hands. After all, what teaches children (and Sherlock is often no more than a consulting five-year-old) to empathise and know right and wrong? Disney, of course.

I told him to think of it as an experiment. However uneasy this might have made him feel; my ‘placid’ mind conducting an experiment on him - God, I wasn’t even going to put my results in a table; it was nothing compared to how embarrassed I felt renting a total of eight Disney films and warring once again with the Goddamn chip and pin machine. In the end a so-very-smug assistant had to come and do it for me. Bloody expensive those DVDs were too. And there was always the possibility that he’d refuse point-blank to even have them in the flat, he’s done it before. He’d already responded to my question about why he doesn’t _try_ to empathise with a stiff “I don’t need to”.

I left the ‘experiment’ until the next day as when I got home, DVDs and milk in hand, he looked so wary I knew any attempts to get him to settle down and just _watch_ would be futile. We nearly needed an emergency dentist when I informed him that if he abused the nicotine patches my experiment wouldn’t work, he ground his teeth so loudly.

We started early the next morning with Beauty and the Beast. I like the songs and I thought it would help Sherlock see that ordinary people, even not very nice people could be more than just ‘stupid’ – they could be multifaceted. I told him this and did not waste my breath explaining when he knew full well that when I say multifaceted, I did not mean that people could be boring as well.

Embarrassingly, Sherlock was able to deduce which film I was going to be “torturing” him with as he caught the end of my “Be Our Guest” rendition in the shower. He cheerfully informed me, as I wiped the dust off the top of the DVD player, that I do not have the X Factor. I knew getting him into crap telly was a big mistake.

Needless to say, Sherlock did not enjoy Beauty and the Beast. Even Mrs Hudson grew tired of hearing him tut in the five minutes she was upstairs. How I managed to cope with that and his long-suffering sighs right in my ear for the duration of it I will never know. I had to pause the film halfway through to let him finish his rant about stereotypes and feminism and a background story on one of the cartoonists. He only stopped because I threatened to sing along.

The first film was not successful. At all.

Sherlock was equally as unimpressed with Toy Story. A whole range of colourful polysyllabic adjectives were used to describe how personally insulting he found both the films so far. For me, it’s a heart warming tale of friendship and teamwork. Despite announcing that he was going to delete all recollection of it from his hard drive, I swear I heard a few snatches of a You’ve Got A Friend In Me violin arrangement while I was showering. Still bristling from his last slur on my singing, I didn’t join in, but I call that more of a success. At least he liked the music.

We were back to square one on day three. In fact, Sherlock cannot have learned anything from The Little Mermaid because as soon as Ursula appeared on the screen he exclaimed, “John! You didn’t tell me Mycroft was in this film.” I will not comment on the extent of my laughter, whether or not Sherlock and I sat giggling for the next few hours at a paused screen of Ursula, as no doubt the other Holmes is reading this with a signature frown as I type. But I will say that the film has been ruined forever and that Sherlock got out of watching the rest when ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ became unbearable.

The next day I forced him next to me on the sofa, confiscating my laptop (I really shouldn’t have to confiscate my own possessions) so he couldn’t distract himself, and put The Fox and the Hound on. It would have been perfect had he not wittered on about the Baskerville case. In the end I got up and left him to it. Mrs Hudson made a cake for the café and let me have the left over cake mix.

When I made my way back upstairs an hour or so later Sherlock was stretched out on the sofa, hands steepled underneath his chin. Thinking, then. The DVD had not been switched off and the annoying theme music was playing over and over.

I was going to just ignore him and take a look at the photographs from an old cold case (top secret though, sorry) when, out of nowhere, Sherlock mumbled something about how the fox reminded him of me. With trepidation, I asked why and now I am tempted to draw up a list of reasons of exactly why the fox is not _stupid_.

I told him that he reminded me of the hound. Because he is an idiot.

Regardless, I’d call that a minor success.

Since he was doing better with the whole ‘empathy’ side of human nature, and because I know he loves a challenge, the next day I thought I’d hit him with the big guns (any comments about my ‘army muscles’, _Harry_ , will be deleted). To make things more exciting, I let him decide – I couldn’t pick and he wouldn’t be able to stand three more days of Disney. Dumbo, Bambi or Lion King. I left them on the kitchen table for him to find while I went out to buy replacement milk for the bottle festering on the mantelpiece.

When I returned only Lion King remained on the table (the others were in the bag, thank God, it cost enough just to rent them). Apparently he was able to deduce what I wanted to watch from the way I’d laid them out on the table, with The Lion King on the right. I’d held it in my hands for the longest and therefore I was keen to keep it. I tried to bring the fact that it was just the way I’d picked them up to his attention, but no. I was, however, more than happy to sit down with my cup of tea and watch it with him. The fact that he’d chosen it because he thought it was the one I wanted to watch the most proved that my ‘experiment’ was going somewhere.

Sherlock was surprisingly tolerant with this film, he only gave me two bemused glances when I quoted it throughout and only sighed once when I began singing before I caught myself. And, it did happen, when I sobbed into the cold dregs of my tea, he kindly ignored me.

After the film was done and the swelling around my eyes had thankfully reduced, Sherlock turned and asked me, rather derisively, why someone would bother watching something that would make them upset. I couldn’t help thinking of the family photos and videos that got sent to Afghanistan for the soldiers to give them hope. They (and I, more often than not) were wrecked when they’d finished but they’d go on stronger than before. So I didn’t reply.

A further three hours later my head was throbbing from the incessant scraping of Sherlock’s violin. I had nothing to do, either, than sit in my chair and question whether it was a good idea to turn the telly on and let the newsreaders battle with his playing. He was deep in thought, that much was obvious, and I will never cease to find it unfair that when he has irritating thoughts he takes it out on his violin. A stress ball would be much healthier for my hearing.

As I reached for the remote, he stopped. “Sentiment?” I was asked and though a little taken aback, I managed to choke out an affirmative. “Ah,” He paused, I feared for a moment he was going to start scraping again. “Good.”

The rest of the afternoon was wasted listening to Sherlock upstage Elton John almost as in apology for the previous hours of torture.

That, I would call a minor success, even better though, was when we went to hand in the evidence we found to wrap up the cold case. Anderson made a snide comment about our favourite detective’s methods and instead of making a crude observation about him and Sgt. Donovan, or throwing a punch at him, Sherlock told him “Hakuna Matata” and flounced (literally, I have never seen so much sass) out of Scotland Yard.

I’m glad he left so quickly, Lestrade and I couldn’t hold it together much longer. Sherlock might not be fully in tune with people’s feelings but...

That was brilliant.


End file.
